Category: News

Buy Now On a new National Weather Service web page, Ottawa Building Official Mike Sutfin points out the faint image of the abandoned railroad bed which affects river flooding as predicted by a new computer. Image Captured by Charles Stanley

Ottawans who want to watch their town get flooded now can do so from their home computers — with no real damage involved.

A computer simulation of flooding by the Fox and Illinois rivers that
can be controlled by the viewer has been launched by the National
Weather Service in partnership with the Illinois State Water Survey,
FEMA and city of Ottawa.

“It is remarkable just how darned accurate this is,” said Ottawa
Building Official Mike Sutfin during a demonstration for The Times.

As he adjusted the water level control, the blue overlay of the rivers began to expand from their banks onto low lying property.

“Then all of a sudden we get to see the scary stuff,” he said.

Suddenly, as the river heights passed any past records, flood walls
were overwhelmed, bridges disappeared and neighborhoods were submerged.

“This is pretty crazy to look at, but for us it’s a wonderful
planning tool for dealing with floods,” Sutfin said. “We can see how
deep the waters will be and where. I think we should be prepared even
for the crazy flooding, because although it’s unlikely, we shouldn’t
consider ourself immune to it.”

As an indication of the precision of the ground map, Sutfin pointed
out the faint image of the abandoned railroad bed east of Ottawa that
once was the route of the interurban streetcar line between Ottawa and
Marseilles.

“That old railroad bed restricts the flow of water until it reaches a certain height,” he said. “This map is really accurate.”

The inundation mapping extends approximately 3 miles upstream and 2.5
miles downstream of the Illinois river gage at Ottawa High School, as
well as 4 miles upstream on the Fox River from its confluence with the
Illinois.

To the Editor:Illinois is seeing firsthand the havoc flooding creates for people in Northern Illinois. Four counties have been declared disaster areas as the Fox River, Des Plaines River, Chain of Lakes and other waterways have wiped out property and infrastructure. The state of Illinois has the largest collection of inland bodies of water and rivers in the continental United States. Twelve percent of surface in Illinois is mapped as a flood plain. My 38th Senate District, which stretches from Bureau County on the west to Will County on the east, has about 130 miles worth of river frontage, one of the most in the state. Ottawa alone is the watershed for 12,000 square miles.

Flooding is serious in Illinois and it requires a serious approach to deal with it.

Like Northern Illinois right now, in 2013, communities I represent
along the Illinois and Fox rivers also lived the hardships that come
with severe flooding. Many neighborhoods, businesses and infrastructure
were destroyed. Morris Hospital had to close. Thousands of lives were
impacted, property was lost, tokens of precious memories were gone
forever, and infrastructure had to be rebuilt. That flood cost La Salle
and Grundy counties alone more than $150 million.

That’s why after that flood, my office teamed up with local leaders
and started the Illinois Valley Flood Resiliency Alliance (IVFRA). The
IVFRA brings communities, local governments and emergency personnel
together as one unit to prepare for and battle floods. It includes La
Salle, Grundy, Bureau, and Putnam counties.

The IVFRA meets four times a year and has resiliency plans in place
for the region. Cities in my district have implemented new flood-related
ordinances that are helping keep water away from homes, schools and
businesses. There are also now 24 new Certified Floodplain Managers in
my district.

The IVFRA has received statewide and national attention. It’s is also
now approved as a continuing education credit for certified floodplain
managers.

In April, our area saw rising rivers and streams after heavy
rainfall. However, after coordinating with members of our Illinois
Valley Flood Resiliency Alliance, the impact was minimal. How
governments respond upstream and downstream impacts other communities
along the waterway. So, being on the same page as a region has made a
big difference.

The IVFRA is truly a model other regions of the state and the country should adopt. It has given our communities a better chance at staying dry.

For Ottawa, the savings was millions of dollars, according to Ron
Davis, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency’s state hazard
mitigation officer.

“I’m the SHMO,” Davis likes to joke.

The stubbornness was on the part of Ottawa Building Official Mike
Sutfin, and it took place years ago when a backup generator was going to
be installed for Ottawa’s sewage treatment plant, Davis recounted last
week at a meeting of state Sen. Sue Rezin’s Illinois Valley Flood
Resiliency Alliance.

There are a lot of angles to flood mitigation, Davis said.

“But too often when we talk mitigation, we mostly talk about funds,” he said.

But there are other important factors.

“The thing that’s saving the taxpayers’ money and making the
community safer, is the stuff you do on the front end,” Davis told the
alliance members. “You guys can really make a difference.”

His favorite case in point is his tale of Sutfin and the backup generator.

“It’s the best example in the state,” Davis said.

“The city was building a new multimillion dollar sewer plant. Mike
sees the design — and this is a world-class engineering firm that
designed it — and saw they put the backup generator at ground level in
the flood plain.

“Mike takes a look at it and he says ‘No way: This isn’t acceptable.’

“He got browbeaten by those guys pretty good,” said Davis. “You know ‘Who are you to tell us what to do?’

“But Mike held his ground, and he said, ‘No way; you’re not going to
build unless its three feet above the base flood elevation.’ So they
build it on a pedestal about six feet in the air.”

Then came the huge flood of 2013, Davis recalled.

“I go out to the sewer plant with Mike, and there’s the waterline about four feet up on this thing.

“If Mike had not held his ground, that generator would have been
totally submerged, and the city would have lost the whole sewer plant.

“I asked Mike how much it cost to build this concrete stand and he said five to ten thousand dollars.

“Mike did it and he saved the town millions of dollars,” said Davis.

Sutfin said not only did the elevated generator save the city plenty
of money, it also prevented plenty of raw sewage from going straight
into the Illinois River.

Right now the only evidence of the flood’s high water mark on the
concrete generator stand is a dark line a little more than half way up.

Pretty soon that will change, Sutfin said.

Ottawa is in line to participate in FEMA’s High Water Mark Initiative.

As part of that project, signs showing past high water marks will be
posted in prominent places throughout the city — including the concrete
backup generator stand.